I just re-read an old article by P.T. Kidd from about 20 years ago where he argued that new technology development was failing to learn from past development efforts. He cites several mistakes he saw continuing into 1988, and I mention it today because several of the problems he points out are still present today (making many of these mistakes much older than the people currently making them). It’s a good read, and worth the time – but more to the point, it speaks to a larger issue: we continue making mistakes and taking unacceptable risks in this industry because we do not see risks in a general sense, and therefore, we fail to learn from the risky failures of our past.
Posted On: Friday, September 3rd, 2010
Posted In: Featured, Project Management Office
Subscribe: RSS 2.0
Comments: 2 Responses
Hi Matthew,
This is interesting. I’m not familiar with P.T. Kidd nor his article, but I can absolutely see the validity of your suggestions here. Repeated failures are a sign that something could be done and simply has not yet been, which is immmensely frustrating for anyone involved. I’d be interested in reading the article if you could point me towards it.
Thanks for sharing!
-Matt
Hi Matt – Kidd’s name is actually a clickable link to the paper, but I’m not sure how obvious that is in various browsers…
For the sake of being thorough, here is the full (not so friendly) URL: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fiel5%2F2201%2F307%2F04648547.pdf%3Farnumber%3D4648547&authDecision=-203